UP MAGAZINE Vol 7.07 Photography Issue - Page 30

URBAN PRESENCE
A Street Car Named
Desire
I
By David Kaiza
Photos Andrew Njoroge
t is getting dark on a cold Nairobi Friday evening and the curve at the
end of Fire Station Lane is choking in traffic; four lanes have formed
on a street two vehicles can barely squeeze through.
A sharp, snapping sound draws passengers’ heads left. A Nissan
Caravan passenger minivan has its back wheels spinning in a rut. Like
a beast heaving violently to free itself from a trap, it jerks back and forth. The
word - a loud exclamation - emblazoned on its windscreen “Cheerz”, seems
to bob up and down on this miserable, urban scene. Then heads veer right:
We watch in envious frustration as the fourth lane lurches forward, the
somber face of Jay-Z going past. Just for the four or so meters that opened
at the head of the lane,
they raised a deafening
roar of engines only to
stop abruptly. Another
matatu is now stuck
in our face: “Exotic”,
it says of this gloomy,
cold air filled with
acrid smoke and grey
walls with the smell of
human waste hemming
us in.
10 minutes later,
we crawl out of Fire
Station Lane towards
River Road only to
meet an impregnable
wall of matatu - big
Isuzu beasts, with the
forbidding face of the
Notorious B.I.G in
bling bling, the smiling
Nelson Mandela and a
rather lifeless Emperor
Haille Selasie lined
there on their sides.
Then the wall moves
forward and as our
matatu rushes to claim
the gap, lurching on
the pavement, we reach
for handholds as if
taking a cue from the
writing on another matatu which says “Hold me tight”.
We hold tight as we are propelled towards Tom Mboya Street. Amidst
riotous wheels and revving engines, scurrying, scared pedestrians scatter over
the pavement to give us way. Amidst the deafening beat of Hip Hop, I fail to
know how we managed to get out of the city.
If as they say Nairobi is a city on the move, then its uncontested prime
mover is the matatu:
Colourful, intrepid, loud and proud, they give the city the riotous and
gay air of a Brazilian carnival without the bonhomie; part celebration, part
www.upnairobi.com
30
August 2016
masculine bravado, they communicate a sense of pace and impatience, a
virility that is simultaneously impressive and repulsive.
“If you really want to understand what goes on in Kenya, you must
understand what goes on with the matatu,” Prof. Mbugua wa Mungai, a
social scientist at the University of Nairobi says.
“The matatu reproduce the structures of power that are used to oppress
them,” he says, making other observations that present the matatu men –
driver and tout – as contradicted vehicles who figure as freedom fighters but
end up transmitting oppression downwards.
Sole commute for working and lower middle-class Nairobi, the matatu
literally moves millions
to and from work daily.
If you have just come
into the city from the
south, where the airport
and all that glitter are,
what you see as you
enter the CBD is a
cluster of high rises
towering over prim
and proper sedans with
a smattering of plain
white minivans with
yellow lines. Across
Kenyatta Avenue
this remains the case,
staying so when you
cross Kimathi Street
and even Moi Avenue
– a proper international
city of the be-suited
and the well-heeled.
Kenya, more
Westernised than much
of Africa, can afford a
sizeable chunk of its
citizens the money
to buy the newest
model of car and
hence a certain air of
progressive orderliness
line these three
thoroughfares – which
ill-prepares you for what happens once you cross into Tom Mboya Street.
The polite, regulated pace of Kenyatta Avenue